


Don’t do anything stupid

by volcanicpanic



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 21:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20234380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volcanicpanic/pseuds/volcanicpanic
Summary: Mello never wanted to be found. Matt finds him anyway.





	Don’t do anything stupid

Matt didn’t know what he expected to see when he made his way up to Mello’s hospital room but it certainly wasn’t this.

Mello was hardly recognizable beneath messy sheets and half wrapped in gauze. His hair was plastered to his face by sweat. Tear-streaked cheeks were so foreign on Mello’s face that Matt felt as if he had vertigo.

Mello brokenly rolled his head towards the direction of open door. He wasn’t lucid enough to recognize that Matt visited, only that the door had made a sound and let in light from the hall. He made the faintest hum in the back of his throat in unconscious acknowledgment.

‘He’s heavily sedated.’ The nurse explained.

‘Oh. Yeah he looks messed up.’ Matt offered.

She gave him an awkward smile and bowed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Growing up, Mello was always indestructible. No matter how many hits he took, metaphorical or otherwise, Mello never lost drive. He only got more pissed off, more determined. In their time at Wammy’s House, Mello destroyed himself to match Nears raw talent. He chose studying over sleeping, practice over eating, and anger over everything else. If you backed him into a corner he would claw your fucking face off before admitting defeat. Matt, who felt more like a passive observer to the world, could never relate to Mello’s drive, but was absolutely drawn to him for it.

Seeing Mello in such a pathetic state was like learning that the fucking tooth fairy wasn’t real.

Matt took a seat next to the hospital bed and instinctively reached into his pocket for cigarettes. He sighed, correcting himself, and bounced his leg restlessly instead.

•

Matt had no clue how much time had passed when he was woken up by a knock at the door. A nurse, different than the one he had talked to earlier, entered the room. Sheapologetically explained that visiting hours were ending soon while washing her hands and fussing with Mello’s bandaged face. As she changed Mello’s saline drip he groaned in complaint. 

‘Michael! How are we feeling today?’ The nurse asked pleasantly. 

Mello scowled in response and propped himself up on his elbow, which was when he finally noticed Matt. Matt held his breath for what felt like ages for Mello to dig through his fogged brain until he could recognize the man sitting beside him.

Matt couldn’t find what he wanted to say and Mello made no attempts to break his radio silence, so they just sat quietly until Matt was ushered out of the room. He had nowhere to be, so he just sat in his car in the hospital parking lot, blasting the air.

Skipping town and flying to LA had been a last minute decision, made when he gotten an alert that funds in Mello’s trust had been moved. It was barely a secret that Wammy’s House alumn were given such flush bank accounts so that the organization could keep tabs on them. Back when Mello first left, Matt immediately snuck access to his account hoping to find him, but for the next handful of years there would be no leads. The account wouldn’t be touched. 

Had things continued that way, Matt would’ve probably kept floating around the Midwest. Drinking too much, sleeping too little, talking to nobody, and doing nothing. Waiting around on somebody who never planned on coming back for him.

He drove around a while, in a sputtering sedan that he bought off Craigslist a half hour after the plane had landed. He paid in cash and the seller didn’t ask any questions, which Matt was thankful for. It was an ugly thing, dented and rusting, but the normalcy of a manual transmission helped him relax. When the sun began to set he pulled into a half-full parking lot, cracked his window, reclined his seat, and slept.

•

The next day, Matt was surprised to find Mello upright. He was sitting in bed furiously texting when Matt appeared in the doorway.

‘Why’d you find me?’

Straight to business.

‘Dunno. You used your Wammy’s money,’ he answered, by not answering the question. He didn’t entirely know himself.

‘So what? You like, dropped everything to come here?’

Matt shrugged, fiddling with the car keys in his pocket 

‘I guess.’

‘You guess?’

Despite his broken-baby-bird appearance, Mello’s tone was severe, bitter. Matt didn’t like being on the receiving end of it. His phone buzzed again and Mello returned to what seemed like a much more important conversation than the one he was having with Matt.

‘I mean like, yeah Mello, I guess. Maybe if you had texted me like. One time. To say you were fine, you coming back on the grid wouldn’t be such a big deal. Not like half your face was blown off. Not like you disappeared and left me alone and I was like. Happy to know you were actually alive or anything.’

‘I never asked you to check on me.’

Matt was fidgeting, looking anywhere in the room except Mello’s face. His ears and neck were red from the outburst. Mello always knew how to get a rise out of him, even now.

‘Sorry. I can uh, go,’ he mumbled, ‘If you want me to, I mean.’

‘What do you want to do?’

Matt pressed his thumb against the teeth of his car key and stared at the monitor beside Mello’s bed. He hadn’t been consciously involved in his own life for ages, and to suddenly be around Mello, be yelled at by Mello, was overwhelming.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ Mello relented, voice softer now.

•

Midway through the drive to his apartment, Mello tiredly stretched his bandaged arm in front of him.

‘When I was a kid, like, before everything,’ he began, ‘I had like this big-ass dog.’

‘A dog?’

‘Yeah, she was probably like part rottweiler or something. Doberman, maybe. Skinny as shit when I found her, wandering around, eatin’ trash. My mom let me bring her in and feed her bologna. Wash her up.’

Matt found himself holding his breath as he drove. It was an unspoken rule that nobody talked about their life before they wound up at Wammy’s. To hear about Mello’s childhood, his normal one, felt almost perverse.

‘She started coming around the house all the time and eventually she was mine. I named her Brittany,’ he chuckled to himself, ‘and she would follow me everywhere.’

He open and closed his hand a few times, testing his mangled fingers.

‘I had to get rid of her ‘cause she bit me. She panicked and tore up my arm pretty bad. I was pissed. I felt so betrayed. We had to get rid of her.’ 

Matt had to turn the A/C down to hear him.

‘But it never even mattered because now its like she never even bit me. I would’ve ruined my arm anyway; way worse than she ever could. I hope she knows that I’m not mad. That I know she was just freaked out.’

Unable to conjure an appropriate response, Matt just nodded. Mello shut his eyes for the rest of the car ride.

•

It would be generous to call Mello's apartment spartan. No couch, no TV, nothing on the walls. The only sign of life in the front room was a cheap table with a folding chair parked beneath.

‘I’m sorry, Matt.’

‘For what?’

He didn’t elaborate.

‘It’s whatever. You need to lay down.’ 

Mello’s the bed was equally as plain as the rest of the apartment, with crisp white sheets and a flat pillow.

•

It was rare that Matt slept for more than a couple hours at a time, but despite falling asleep in Mello’s shitty plastic chair, he had slept through the night. The past few days had caught up with him.

He awoke to the sound of arguing in the next room over. The bed he had spent the night next to was empty, with sheets pulled up and neatly folded over.

'Mello?'

The sound paused for a moment before Mello returned his conversation in quieter hisses. When Matt left the bedroom Mello nodded acknowledgment before wrapping up the call.

‘What was that all about?’

‘Work.’

‘You can’t like, call in sick?’

Mello said nothing, texting now.

‘Cause that’s what I did. I called in sick. To come here.’ 

Matt stepped forward, reaching for the phone. Mello swatted his hand away, annoyed.When Matt tried again to grab phone Mello clacked it shut and shoved it in his back pocket. He was out of his loose hospital pajamas, opting for a black shirt and obscenely tight leather pants. He wore knee-high steel toe boots. A rosary hung right over the sliver of skin where his shirt ended and pants began.

‘Uh. Okay calm down Dracula.’

‘Not everyone can just fuck around all the time, Matt.’

He lifted his hands in a sarcastic _don’t shoot_ gesture, which only pissed Mello off more.

‘I am so close. So to finishing what I need to finish, and you’re telling me to lay around and do nothing. Should just I drop all my work like L’s death meant fucking nothing? You never take anything seriously, it’s all just a fucking joke to you, Matt.’

This version of Mello was more familiar than the one he had just driven home the day before.

‘Okay. Like, I think a lot of what you just said does not directly have to do with the legitimate medical advice I was giving you. I think you’re just trying to make me leave so you can continue to, like, kill yourself.’

Mello scoffed, taking his phone back out to read the endless stream of messages he was recieving. This time Matt was able to snatch the phone. Mello, seething, went back into his bedroom, peeled out of his clothes, climbed under the covers.

‘Bitch.’

•

Both Matt and Mello had been told repeatedly at the hospital that it was a bad idea to discharge so early, but Mello just threatened to leave with or without approval. Matt couldn’t help but draw parallels with his Wammy’s House departure.

Now that a few days had passed, Mello had to remove the dressing that covered his arm, back, and left side of his face. Matt had over-prepared, buying enough gloves and sprays and bandages from the drugstore for an eagle-scout badge in first-aid.

It was easy at first, to unravel the bandages around his fingers. They were ugly, red and blistered. Mello grimaced as Matt went to work dabbing on silver sulfadiazine cream, with an expression of focus he had only ever seen Matt direct at the screen of his laptop.

‘What’ve y-,’ Mello breathed in sharply when Matt began to unwrap his wrist. ‘What’ve you uh, been up to?’

It was a sloppy attempt to take his mind off the pain. Beyond sloppy given that he had been barely speaking with Matt the past few days. When he did decide to talk he was overly critical. Of his cooking, his cleaning, his nicotine addiction, the two shirts he had brought, anything Matt did, really. Matt looked up at him with an _are you fucking serious_ look before answering.

‘Well for a while I was consulting on this crypto project. Crypto, crypto currency, it’s like, money online. Cool stuff, if it takes off, but I sort of fell of the wagon and the guy let me go,’ he explained sheepishly. ‘Really cool stuff though…’

Beneath the bandages Mello’s arm was shiny like wax.

‘I uh, when my power got shut off, I needed a real job, ‘cause like, being self-employed wasn’t working for me. So I applied to Pizza Hut. Kinda like as a joke to myself, but then nowhere else even wanted me so, like, Pizza Hut it was. If I’m not fired for fucking off to LA I’ll be coming up on half a year there.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Hah, I’m really not.’

‘We were groomed succeed L, and you’re delivering pizzas?’ 

‘Being L was always kinda. Your thing,’ Matt shrugged.

Matt went back to his task, a little embarrassed. The next 20 minutes passed in silence. As Matt traveled further up Mello’s arm, almost at the elbow, the gauze became harder to remove. It stuck to the skin and it’s removal had Mello holding the side of the table with white knuckles. His teeth were clenched and his entire body had a thin sheen of sweat.

‘Why’d you stop?’

‘I think we should take a break. 

‘What? Halfway through?’

‘Yeah, Mello, I don’t want to like, rip your skin off.’

‘Don’t be a bitch, I’m fine.’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘Twenty minute break.’

•

Matt hit the loose string jackpot on the hem of his shirt while sitting on the toilet lid, waiting for the shower to heat up. The thread unraveled an entire arms-length and Matt idly wrapped it tight around his pointer, watching it turn from pink to blue.

He was startled out of his trance by Mello in the doorway, who could’ve easily said something smug about how stupid it’d be if Matt was the one who lost fingers in this scenario, but instead he asked if the water was warm yet.

Mello had shed the oversized shirt he had been sleeping in down to his boxers. Even after being off his feet in the hospital for a week his stomach was flat and hard in a way Matt thought only possible through photoshop. From his hips sharp lines of muscle slanted inward, meeting somewhere below his waistband.

‘Uh yeah, its probably good.’ 

Like the rest of the apartment, the shower was designed for utility over comfort. The entire bathroom was claustrophobically small. Mello pushed back the thin plastic curtain and stepped into the tiny shower, boxers a weak attempt at modesty as the water stuck them to his skin. He inhaled sharply as the water hit his skin.

With the help of the water, it was much faster work for Matt to peel away at the tape and dressing covering Mello’s shoulder blade. Mello braced himself against the wall as strips of wet gauze plopped unceremoniously on the floor. Even though he stood outside the shower, Matt’s pushed up sleeves were soaked, and water dribbled down his elbows and onto the floor.

His neck and face were the worst of it. Even brushing Mello’s hair away from the wound made his legs buckle. Matt gave him a minute to catch his breath which he used to slide down to the floor of the shower, his head back and angelic face scrunched in pain, like some kind of painting.

Matt had to crouch down half in the shower to free his face from the dressing. He had given up on any charade of staying dry by this point, head fully under the stream of water.

The water had run cold by the time they were finished. Matt gathered the discarded dressings off the shower floor while Mello heaved up the eggs he had eaten for breakfast.

When it was all over, Mello shed his wet underwear and got helped into bed. Matt pulled shoes over his wet socks and drove around the neighborhood aimlessly until he ran out of cigarettes.

•

Mello did not mourn for his damaged face. He might’ve, had Matt not been there, but Matt was there, and he did not.

He and Matt had fallen into a routine of walking to the diner down the street for dinner each night. Every time Matt would insist on driving, and every time Mello would convince him to walk. Matt would complain about everything, the heat, the smog, the sun, and Mello would smile and shake his head and call him an idiot for wearing jeans and long sleeves.

On one of their walks back from the apartment, Matt found an old wooden chair out with some trash. Mello raised his eyebrows when he pulled it onto the sidewalk to appraise.

‘What? Do you think you’re moving in?’

‘Spent my rent money on a plane ticket and a car. You’re not gonna make me homeless, are you?’ 

‘If you fill my house up with garbage I might.’

But he didn’t. Not when Matt brought home a TV, nor a ratty old couch, nor a wall mounted singing bass toy. Admittedly, bass only lasted a night in the house before disappearing during one of Matts cigarette runs.

•

‘It isn’t going stay like this. I hope you know that.’

Mello had his head in Matt’s lap on the couch. Matt was playing idly with Mello’s hair with one hand while playing Wii baseball with his other. He assumed Mello was asleep, and and had the TV turned low to accommodate. He flicked his wrist and the words ‘Nice Job!’ appeared on the screen.

Mello was talking to him like he was a kid. It had only been a month. Things were good right now, why couldn’t Mello just let things be good? Not constantly remind him that their time together was temporary.

Matt didn’t respond. _Wack_. Nice Job! _Wack_. Nice Job! _Wack_. Nice Job!

‘I’m done with what I need to do in LA.’

_Wack_. Nice Job! _Wack_. Nice Job! _Wack_. Nice Job!

‘I’m going to meet with a contact in New York.’

_Wack_. Nice Job! 

_‘_And after that, I’ll be flying to Japan.’

_Wack_. Nice Job! _Wack_. Nice Job!

Mello opened his eyes, but Matt wouldn’t break away from the TV. He was beating the computer 74-0. The score would max out at 99-0. Matt knew this because he had already done it twice today. Eight times yesterday.

_Wack_. Nice Job!

On the next pitch, Mello snatched the remote and turned off the game. 

‘You know, most people play games to have fun.’

‘I was having fun.’

‘No you weren’t.’ Mello scoffed, and sat up. ‘Why did you come here, Matt?’

Matt slouched in the couch. Mello hated the way he made himself small.

‘Dunno.’ 

'Matt.'

‘I wasn’t like, happy, or whatever, okay? And your name appeared and it made me, I don’t know, it made me like, feel something after being on autopilot for months.’ 

‘This is you off autopilot?’

‘Fuck off Mello.’

Matt grabbed his keys and pulled on his shoes, an unlit cigarette already tucked in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t know where to drive so he just turned on the A/C and lit up. He didn’t look over when Mello climbed into the passenger seat a half hour later.

‘I need a fucking drink,’ Mello admitted.

‘Yeah, me too.’

At the liquor store Matt paid for the two handles of vodka Mello decided on with a crumpled wad of bills.

‘That’s it. Last of my cash.’

‘You’d’ve spent it on cigarettes anyway,’ Mello snarked, ‘I’ll get you back.’

Lukewarm vodka wan’t Matt’s idea of a good time. He preferred beer, something that made him feel sleepy and full. Mello opened the first bottle before they even left the parking lot, taking a swig like he was in commercial. It dribbled down his chin some.

He passed it to Matt who took a more conservative drink, feeling the heat of alcohol settle in his belly before starting the car. By the time they got home the bottle would be more than half empty.

•

Matt woke up in wrapped Mello’s white sheets, feeling awful. His pillow was damp with sweat and he wrong, not waking up on the shitty tree-lawn couch he had rescued. Like he was some infection that the apartment had failed to fight off and now he bringing down the whole system. He hadn’t pitied himself this badly in a while, he was due for a spiral.

He hadn’t realized the shower had been going until after it had shut off. Mello opened the bathroom door holding a towel low around his hips with one hand and went to his closet where he pulled out a small suitcase.

‘Morning,’ Matt awkwardly announced to feel less like a voyeur

‘Didn’t expect you to wake up so early, sleeping beauty.’

‘Yeah, I feel like shit.’ Matt’s mouth felt like sand. ‘Did we hook up?’

‘You wanted to. I don’t sleep with people when they’re blackout drunk, Matt.’

‘Never pinned you for a romantic.’

Mello’s laugh was like a bark, and Matt liked hearing it. He also liked watching Mello have to bounce a few times to fit his ass into his pants.

‘Maybe ask again when I get back. When you’re not wasted.’

‘Get back?’

Mello looked annoyed and zipped his suitcase. ‘You seriously never listen to anything I say.’ He put on his rosary and then a shirt.

Matt shut his eyes to the sound of Mello walking around the apartment. When he opened them again, he was standing over the bed with a glass of water in one hand and pills in the other. 

‘Take these.’

He did. 

‘I’ll be back in a few days, don’t do anything stupid.’

Matt had wanted to say that he had heard him say that in the past, wanted to throw it in his face, but it wasn’t fair. Pissing Mello off before he left wouldn’t make it sting less when he didn’t come back.

Mello must’ve seen the doubt in Matt’s face because he put his hand beneath Matt’s chin, lifting his eyes to his. He leaned in and gave Matt a chaste kiss that ended as abruptly as it had begun.

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ he repeated, on his way out of the bedroom.

Just like that, Matt was alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thinking about these two in 2019 I guess


End file.
